Hey Sulzberger, there's money over here

Friday, April 03, 2009 by Dave Winer.

I was talking with Scoble on the phone today, and said some things there that bear repeating here.

1. I wasn't happy in the 90s with the way Microsoft reacted to Netscape and the web. I thought they were being too aggressive, great creative stuff was happening -- we didn't need a destructive force. I liked how the web broke away from the tech business, I didn't want it to get sucked back in. Microsoft tried, and for a while it looked like they had quelled the rebellion, but then it broke loose again, for good.

2. But... There is something right about an industry realizing its turf has being invaded, and acting to defend it. Because now we're seeing it another way -- the tech industry is clearly stepping on the turf of the publishing industry, a new company has started that is sniffing at a billion dollar valuation, and with all that money flowing around it, and all the red ink in newspaper publishing, you shouldn't have to be Puzzlemaster Will Shortz to figure it out. But they're talking about closing down the Boston Globe, and the SF Chron, when they should be thinking about ways to grab some of that wonderful PE ratio that Twitter is swimming in. I try to telegraph it every way I can, but they don't seem to get the clue. Hey Sulzberger, there's money over here. Get your head out of the box or cut some holes it in, or whatever.

3. Japan can lay broadband pipe for $20 per houshold and it's much faster than anything we have in the US. It costs us $800 per household. Maybe we should steal a page from Microsoft's playbook and start getting aggressive in ways that would have frightened me in 1995. As a country, we need to be more competitive. Start right there. Bluntly: Why can't we lay broadband pipe for roughly the same price Japan does?

4. Maybe Bill Gates should offer his services as a competitiveness consultant.

Dave Winer, 53, pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in Berkeley, California.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.